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Well, they were favored to win gold, but There's been a lot of storylines with Team USA at the Olympics in France. Jason Timpf hoops tonight, who works about as hard as anybody in this business. And I want to start with Jason Tatum. So there's two reasons why a normally good shooter doesn't shoot well. One his legs, he's tired. That happens you go on a five games, eight day Eastern road trip. You know you're an older player, back
to backs, so you lose your legs. The only other way a good shooter shoots poorly usually is you lose your confidence. We've seen Lebron, especially early in mid career, like just lose his confidence in the three point shot. He acknowledg that. Then he would say, okay, how about to go score at the basket for about two games, and then he would build it back up. Jason Tatum's lost his jump shot, and I think it's and I think what it is, it really is it defines who
he is. It's one thing that he didn't play in one of the games. And I can get into that in a second. But I believe the Celtics traded Marcus Smart because their problem was Okay, It's one thing that Tatum is slightly more skilled than Jason Jalen Brown. If Jalen Brown takes over late in games, he's still a great player. But when Marcus Smart also started taking the ball out of his hands late, then it was a timeout. This isn't gonna work, and they got him out of town.
They got a more talented player with the same skill set defensively, Drew Holliday, who more understands his role he's got in the bag. You know, it's a different player, different mindset. And I think Brad Stevens has told us time and time again the truth about Jason him.
He loves him.
He's smart, he works hard, he's collaborative. But in big spots against great players or playing with great players, he can kind of lose his confidence. And when I watch him against Aalsunani, I'm like, where's what's going on? And I don't think it's mechanics, Jason. I think it's a confidence thing, and we're going to have to acknowledge this is a little bit of who he is from time to time.
Yeah, it goes deeper than the Drew Holiday thing. It even extends to Porzingis because like the reality is is those moves are aggressive in the sense that there is actually some fallout. It's not just the draft compensation, although they actually made out pretty well in terms of asset usage in those deals, but it's a lot of it
has to do with the second apron. Like you, by virtue of bringing those two guys in and making it so that you have five thirty plus million dollar players on your roster, you limit your ability to be flexible in the future. And we talked a lot after the twenty twenty two series about whether or not it is one of those things where the Celtics could bank on Tatum and Brown just improving naturally as time progressed, or if there was a certain ceiling there and they needed
to be more aggressive. And to your point, I think Brad Stevens has made that pretty clear with the moves that he's made. He understands that Tatum is what he is and that he does need a large amount of support. And to Tatum's credit, I do think he's kind of the perfect collaborative superstar because if you're playing on a team that has that kind of talent, you don't want a dude who's gonna hijack things and play super helio centric.
You want a ball mover.
And I do actually think there is something a little bit mechanical going on with Tatum. I don't know if it's from how much muscle he's put on that he's just a little tight, or if he's tinkering with his mechanics now because he's been missing, but his shot just it looks like it has a little bit of a hitch in it, like right is he's starting to gather. And that is a little funky to me because this
extends beyond the Tmuosa stuff. As you mentioned, he's struggling with Tmosa person Energy's oo for eleven on jump shots in the x Phibition Games and the Olympic Games so far with Team USA. But he took one hundred and eighty eight jump shots in the playoffs and got just one hundred and fifty one points out of them. That's zero point eight points per shot, which is not good. Anything below one point is bad, and he's well below
one point in a large sample side. So we're in a extended span here of Tatum really struggling to shoot the basketball. And like, there's two ways to look at that. You could take a glass half full and be like, hey, what if he figures it out this summer and then we have the Celtics from last year plus Tatum shooting
the ball, Well, that's scary, right. But the other side of it is if this is something, if this is one of those things where it's an indicator of him at this physical build struggling to shoot the basketball, it's going to make it really difficult for him to impact winning at the level of the top five players in the league because when you go up into that group, when you look at Shay, when you look at Luca, like, the shooting at that position is incredibly valuable unless you're Yannis,
unless you're Jokic, and as physically gifted as Tatum is, he's not like those guys. And so I'm just concerned for him from the standpoint of, like, he needs to be a good jump shooter to be a legitimate superstar level player.
So let's talk Embiid who you know, when he comes into the league, there was a sign early first couple of years, can't play it unhealthy. So it's like, uh, oh, Biggs get hurt early. Biggs usually get hurt often, So he's always had an injury history, but most bigs eventually do right, like almost all of them.
Y'aw ming shack.
You can just Greg odin sam BOUI couldn't get on the floor, like it's the position. People probably aren't built to last at seven to two, you know, or shack size with those feet back. It wears out, like I get it. But Embiid presents something else beyond the injuries, and because he is more dynamic and more fun to watch than Jokic or a Yiannis, and there was a shack component with better ball handling skills. There is also something that I find my eyes keep telling me this
when I watch the Sixers. Is that And the Olympics just heightened this is that they can keep running coaches through Philly and teammates through Philly. I mean even Ben Simmons for a while he wasn an All Star like his first year right, like Ben did have promise that, yeah, Embiid really needs to stay close from the basket. So coaches kind of pushed a D out for a couple of years. It was like fashionable and ad didn't even
good shooting from out there. A D said I want to go back, and he has been for two years.
A monster.
I mean, to me, the most underrated player in the Olympics and the league right now is Ad.
He is just fun.
Turn the sound down, watch you can't if he's on the floor. It's like Lebron, you can't take your eyes off him.
He's dominant.
Embiid to me, somebody has to just acknowledge fella. Get away from the perimeter. He fashions himself or is told that he is such an important part sometimes a perimeter basketball. He's big, he's aging, he's not as quick. I thought he literally got in the way of this offense. I'd seen it in Philly, but it was so profound with this team. It bothered me. I'm screaming at the TV, get him out of the game. Your thoughts on Embiid and are any of these valid? That I watch him offensively.
I know the numbers probably say is great, but he can he stops I just feel like he can stop offenses too often.
So it's both.
It's the jump shot and it's the ball movement piece the jump shot piece. This has been a consistent story and Embiad's career, especially over the previous couple of years. This last year, he actually shot the ball okay against the Knicks, But like in the previous couple of seasons, he would shoot like fifty percent on these like mid range pull up jump shots in the regular season, but then he'd get in front of Al Horford and he couldn't make them like he would he would struggle to
knock him down in the postseas. That was a consistent theme and be you to get to the postseason, his jump shot would go away. And one of the biggest things that he ever built out the way Jokic did is those short range shots, the hooks, the floaters, all that stuff that's within like exactly, and those are way more dependable in this kind of setting. The second piece of it is learning how to play basketball with other people. This is a this is an epidemic around the league
with certain guys, and we see this. It's kind of like this with Luca a little bit with more of a perimeter sense, but we see it with him need where it's like as long as everything is flowing through him and he's deciding every single possession, he has this otherworldly value as almost like.
A force of nature.
So for instance, if you took ad or Bam and you put them on last year's Sixers team with Tyrese Maxi. They're not as good because you can't just give the ball to Ad and Bam like every single possession and ask them to determine outcomes. They're not good enough on
the offensive end of the floor. But when you're actually playing with people other good basketball players, and this will be really interesting this year with Paul George now in the equation when you actually need to keep everybody in rhythm and there's ball in player movement, and Be for lack of a better term, sucks at that style of basketball.
He doesn't know how to play quick decision making flowing from side to side, and especially at the center position in modern NBA basketball, when you play five out, the center is the bridge between the two sides of the floor. He's the guy who has to catch and turn and go to the other guard and flow on the other side. So when you're trying to keep Booker and Steph and Lebron and all these guys in rhythm at the same time, it's better to have a guy like Ad who his
entire life has been a screen and roll big. He's going to pitch the ball to the other side, set a screen, roll hard to the rim, run up and down the floor, and transition. It's a foot speed thing. It's a decision making thing. You put him in this setting and it's just a completely different kind of basketball than what he was doing for the Sixers last year.
And it's quite frankly, he has years of needing to learn how to play that style if he's ever going to play in more of a five out, read and react type of system.
So during COPA, team you I say struggled, and I not to make an excuse or defend Greg Berholt or the coach at the time, but our style is more European. We have more players now soccer players in America playing in Europe and flourishing. So COPA is a smaller, shorter field. It didn't play to our space, our strength, which is speed and spacing. So as we've become more skilled and more European, which is the Goldwyn World Cup, COPA has become a bad tournament for US, which is a grittier,
lower ranked teams, more physical soccer. Similarly, Steph with FEBA three point shooting is almost it plays with your head, it's closer, it's more physical you don't get the whistle. More physicality allowed. And as I watched Steph struggle, it's not like Tatum struggling, It's not a confidence issue. It's a is it possible that FIBA Olympic basketball isn't really it's not really built necessarily for Steph all the time. I mean, Lebron's good everywhere, But as Steff struggles, I'm
how do I reconcile that he's a great shooter? It's closer he should be shooting the lights out he's not.
Why So Sudan in particular, and I think their reputation obviously that them as an organization within FIBA don't have the reputation of the other great European teams or South American teams that we faced over the years, Like even back in the old days when it was like Argentina, you know that that was or France that was given his issues, they don't have that history. But I think South Sudan is the most athletic team in this field by far, Like they have just an enormous amount of
fast dudes with really long wingspans. They're athletic by NBA standards, let alone by the Phoebe standards. And so if you remember last year when Golden State needed to get some big wins down the stretch of the season, the two teams that were giving them a lot of trouble were Sacramento and New Orleans, two teams that were really fast and really long on the perimeter. And that's like kind
of one of those things. Whereas Steph has aged, he's become a little bit susceptible to specific types of matchups, particularly teams that are closing those gaps on him. And then the piece you mentioned about spacing is real, like the lack of a defensive three seconds is a real thing that people are factoring in. So to put it simply, the vast majority of teams, when they're spacing, will put their big man on the opposite block from where the
ball is. And so with defensive three seconds, that defender has to step in and out of the lane on the far end of the court, whereas in FIBA he can park his ass right underneath the basket and he doesn't have to move at all whatsoever. And so this, by the way, is why I'm far more concerned about teams like Germany and France or even Serbia against USA than a team like Canada who just doesn't have the
bigs to deal with USA underneath the basket. Teams that can park big bodies under the rim can force you to make jump shots. And as soon as you force a team to make jump shots, they can go cold. They can have issues, which is what happening in South Sudan last time. But yeah, as far as Steph goes like he, I mean, we let's put it. Let's put it straight up, Colin. He struggled most of the tail end of the season last year too, So this is
an extension of that. And I'm really hoping as a basketball fan that this is just a blip and he's going to figure it out, because I really want the Warriors to be interesting next year.
Yeah.
You know, when you have a bunch of kids, I have six in my life, the early years can be frustrating and a lot of work. But what's fascinating about the early years is kids make giants social and emotional and physical leaps in nine months. I mean, my son had a biting stage, he had a coughing stage where he would make coughing noises, and I always told my wife, I'm like, it's just just nine year old boys go through weird, weird you know cycle phases.
Yeah, they just do.
Like and I want to use that as as sort of a pivot to watching young NBA players, is that when they're eighteen, nineteen twenty, the players just come back of an off and off season and you're like, damn, he got a jumper. So I'm watching Wemby and I feel like I'm watching a kid grow, Like I'm watching him in some of these games and I'm like, oh, this is terrifying for the league. Like he you go to his first month in the league and now Jason offensively,
he plays with so much more confidence. Defensively, he's blocking stuff with his elbow. He is now way more aggressive and asserting himself. And I'm watching this and I'm like I said by the Trade Deadline. I said this on our previous podcast, By the Trade Deadline, he and Ann will be the faces of the league. I'm not sure it's going to take that long. Like Jokich is still
the best player. His ability to not only dominate but compliment other players and elevate them it kind of separates Lebron's magic.
Certain guys.
I would say Michael didn't make everybody better, not every teammate Lebron, Magic Jokic, Chris Paul, every teammate's better. You play her best with him, get Chris ball with Wemby. But I'm watching him, and maybe it's maybe I don't see him as much as you do. I'm seeing major jumps from Wemby even in these Olympics.
No. Absolutely, they've been running a lot more offense through him than you would expect. And a big part of that is France doesn't have an amazing guard corps like Evan Fournier is their best guard, a guy who couldn't crack the rotation for the Knicks last year, right, so like, but what they're doing in a lot of cases is they're feeding him at the elbow and they're like running literally ball screens like the way you would typically with
a point guard in a center. They're running with him and Gobaer at the foul line, and they're letting him determine the outcome of possessions. They're throwing it to him down on the blocks. He's become a lot quicker at like reading the floor and making reads then I would expect a player at his age. And part of this I think has a lot to do with him playing professionally as opposed to coming up through the college system. Like he's just been around a lot of really smart
basketball minds in his development. The big ones that stands out is the dude is just a savage competitor and is not scared of the moment. Like he was kind of on the back burner for a good portion of that second half against Japan, and then it went to ot and he just took over. Immediately was demanding the ball in the block, got an and one, he missed a three on the right wing, and then immediately called for the ball back and knocked one down at the
top of the key. He's got like just incredible scoring polish all over the floor. He's handling physicality really really well. Obviously you mentioned the defensive stuff. It's hard to even describe. It doesn't even look like other NBA players that have come before him.
I'm with you.
I think I think we got to think long and hard about him being a top ten player right now, right now, and then and right now, and I think by the deadline next year, we could be talking about a guy who's who's second team All NBA, Like This is a real, a real potential outcome for him in the short term.
Now for a segment called making It Look Easy, brought to you by Morgan and Morgan, America's largest injury law firm, BAM Gonna Buy You Team USA made it look easy. Couple of corner threes, eighteen point seven rebounds over the win against South Sudan at the Olympics in Paris. Well, just like BAM made it look easy, so does Morgan and Morgan. They have over one hundred offices nationwide. They
fight for you and fair compensation. Over fifteen billion dollars recovered with over three hundred thousand clients through the years. With Morgan and Morgan fighting for the people for three and a half decades, thirty five years, America's largest injury law firm. If you're ever injured, go to Fourthpeople dot com slash Colin That's me for the People dot com slash Colin, or dial pound five to nine to check out America's largest injury law firm. Winning gold medals is hard.
Hiring Morgan and Morgan is easy. You know. It's you put a bunch of alphas together and some alphas will shrink and some alphas will rise. Lebron is now the best player on this team. It's like it's now, it's gone past. But what's interesting is that Nick Wright said this to me today on the show in FS one. He said, deep down, Lebron may realize these are the last games of his career that people are really gonna watch, like have a huge audience and are gonna matter and listen.
You and I have been critical of the executive wing of the Lakers. Ad and Lebron on any given game that I've watched, Team USA are the two best players and they're struggling to win a playoff game. It's really frustrating. There's Jeremy Grant may come to town.
He would be.
A solid three, a better a four on a really really good team. He's probably a four, not a three. But be that as it may. But I as I watched Lebron, what it tells me is he's not having to fight to be the alpha. He is so respected that other young players are like, hey, big fella, you run the offense. I mean, I mean like Magic and Michael when they went together, they were fighting. They Magic didn't want to give up the baton. Michael grabbed it like even Ant all these guys, it's like, no, no,
this is Lebron's. This is Lebron's world. And I know you're not surprised by it, but it it does jump out of the TV, does it not.
I'm glad everyone's seeing it too. First of all, to what Nick said, I agree. I think Lebron has always been very aware of the narrative surrounding him, and I think that he saw an opportunity here to be like, if I am the best player on Team USA, it will resonate with people for a long time. And for the record, I think Lebron came right out of the season and started prepping forward. He looks like he's in great shape.
He is flexing every other time down the floor.
I know, like he's he clearly prepped for this as though it was an NBA playoff run. Like that is abundantly clear. And he's and he's playing at that crazy high level. I'm glad you mentioned the Lakers because like so many people are like, oh, they're they're a playing team. They're this, they're that, and it's like, guys, the reason they're a playing team is they don't have a single player on the roster other than Lebron and Ad who can play both ends of the floor. That's literally why
they've struggled. It is a personnel issue. It is not a Lebron James and Anthony Davis issue. Those two pull their weight. They pulled their weight in a major way last season, and the organization is what let them down.
And so I don't really see it that way. As far as as far as Lebron with his team USA context, what's been super fascinating from a basketball perspective is what you're seeing is what it would look like to run five out offense with all the ball and player movements, Steph lying off of screens with the best playmaker of this era kind of orchestrating it at the top of the key. He's not taking a ton of shots. He's seeing his openings and he's shooting the gap and he's
attacking the basket. But they're ducking under all those picks at the top of the key. He's not jacking up threes and hijacking possessions. He's just reading the floor as Steph is running around and as Devin Booker's running around and waiting for guys to make mistakes. One of the most classic decisions that you'll see from that part of the floor is Steph runs off a screen and the
guy screens for him. If those defenders make a mistake, that guy can slip it, and Lebron is just making reads based on what the mistake the defense has made. And so it's kind of like a juiced up version of Draymond with the Warriors, but surrounded by all of these, you know, world class types of players, and it's been
the perfect role for him. And then, quite frankly to your point, and this is where it gets really scary, Colin, I would argue KAD and Lebron and Steph have been the only consistent offensive forces on this team, and we've been disappointed by Jason Tatum. Anthony Edwards has given us some mixed results. There's been good games, there's been bad games.
I think it's just a bad look that if you're in the year twenty twenty four, Steph, Lebron and KD are playing the way they are and the younger generation is struggling to keep up. It's like, thank god for Ad and Band being as good as they've been, because it's just been It's been a disappointing performance from some of the younger American players.
Yeah, it has.
And I let me just say this again, is that I do a segment every week called Colin Wright Colin Wrong. And I wish somebody in politics did it because I don't think being right should be the be all end all.
Of being a host.
Being interesting and informative and being fun should And I was so anti ad when we started doing this podcast together. I went, like two years, I'm like, it's a dad bod. He doesn't work out, he's out of shape, he never plays hurt. And some of that was confirmation biased because I had said I had heard that going in, and he became it. The last two years he is aft. Take Jokichow. I'm not sure there's a big eye take over him, including Jannis. I. I mean, I always use
this rule. There are time when you turn the sound down of a game when and I'll use Magic Johnson when more than Michael, when Magic was on the floor, he had the ball so much unmistakable, you can literally just.
Go, Magic's there. Magic's there.
Magic literally was a six to nine point and then Lebron comes in and he kind of plays points. So the point guard you always kind of knows on the floor, but a lot of times forwards, especially guys who aren't aesthetically beautiful games, you cannot mistake Anthony Davis in a game dominant defender. He's gotten significantly more physical.
To me, I don't know what.
Happened, but he was almost This is weird. He was a rugged finesse player, like you'd be like run over people.
Dude.
I don't know what it is, but when I watch him, he goes after people. He attacks players. Now, some of this he's playing against second team guys in this space, but he's aggressive against Jokic, and I just think to myself, I don't know what it is, but it does prove young people improve, young people are coachable. Young people here criticism. This is weird because he was already good, but he's one of the most improved players, and he did it like as an established great player. To me, he's taken
another level. This is the ad we thought we were getting out of college, and he just wasn't emotionally ready for it.
I think the injuries played a role. Like to your point about I agree, Like in that twenty twenty one, the twenty twenty two stretch. He was kind of like a finesse dude that was really big, but it didn't seem like he was inflicting it on people. But in his defense, he had like repeated ankle injuries and he had an achilles injury during that time. So I really
think Ad just didn't trust his body. And I think the reason why we're seeing him be so physically dominant now is he just is in a really good physical place, and I think that's gone a long way towards helping him facilitate that you mentioned it bouncing off the screen.
It's crazy, like his block that he had on one of the first possessions against Sudan, he he just just pogo sticks above everybody, or that dunk he had on the feed from KD tonight where he takes off from the foul line off of two feet and just throws
it down clean. He just has the craziest combination of like length and mobility in the league, still even at his phase of his career where he's a little bit bigger and not quite as mobile as he was when he was younger, and and you know, at the end of the day, like a lot of the focus has been on what he hasn't been since the bubble, Like he hasn't been knocking down all these crazy jump shots the way he did in the bubble. And that's true, but he's improved so much as a passers overall fear
feel for the game. He is a lot better at those short shots, like the stuff I was talking about with em beat. Ad was well over fifty percent on hooks and floaters last year. That's what he does. And to your point about attacking lower level bigs in FEBA, he was awesome against Jokich. He was awesome most of the tail end of the season. Ad has been playing in the calendar year, Calendar year twenty twenty four, he's been playing at an MVP level and he deserves more credit for them.
Yeah, in a weird way, you watch more film than I do. I wonder if it wasn't this when he was a perimeter player, when he was almost forced to go outside, it was like, well, he doesn't want to play five, so instead of just backing up three feet, let's back him up nine and go shoot threes. He ended up slashing to the basket a lot. He ended up being a bit of a slasher and when you slash and go to the floor, you fall hard. When you take out the perimeter, he's much more around the
free throw line route. He's not slashing as much, and therefore he's not crashing as much.
And I'm just.
Throwing this out there because he went through a stage with a Lakers that like he was just hitting the floor hard, like three times a night, and it just and he's playing twice as physical and doesn't hit the floor as often. So I do wonder. I do wonder a little bit, Jason if as he's reduced his perimeter touches, he's just not in a position to have to race inside for the rebound, put the ball on the floor, come off a screen that he's just not in position
to crack because he hits the floor occasionally. But it was like an epidemic those bubble years. It's like you would watch a Laker game at least twice you would wins. You're like, oh, he's not getting up like that.
That's he doesn't seem to do that as much.
I think that's completely fair, and I think a huge part of it is roster construct. I mean, for going from that, JaVale McGee, Dwhite, Howard group, where like like Ady was playing the vast majority of his minutes at the four in that twenty twenty year, and then even going into twenty twenty one. I mean you add Marc Gasol to the equation. That was when they added Andre Drummond at the tail end of the year. If you remember, like they were going with Ad at the four almost
exclusively and one of the big impacts there. To your point, it's not just the slashing and operating from the perimeter, it's constantly having a big.
Guy in help.
We talked earlier about that geometry of the guy being in the opposite block and the guy stepping in and out with the defensive three seconds. They're still sliding over and getting in the way all the time. It's just there steps slower than Feba. But that's the thing Ad was constantly contending with. If he got past his man, there was another center waiting underneath the basket for him
to deal with. And I do think just in general, him kind of functioning more as a big man scroll screening, rolling into space, but not rolling hard to like he doesn't always roll directly to the rim, like he'll roll into that short area around the foul line like you talked about, he'll take jumpers there, he'll take more floaters. He's just playing more of a grown adult, like grown man, old school style of basketball, and I think I think
it suits him well. I like, honestly, like to your point, like Ad, you always will have these moments where you're watching the Nuggets series and you're like, man, like Lebron is still so good, like is he the best player? Blah blah blah. But if you get past the shot creation piece and just zoom in strictly on winning impact on both ends of the floor, there just aren't many guys who bring as much to the table as he does.
And the simplest explanation or example is this, if Ad or to spring his ankle and his fifteen games next year, as the Lakers are currently constructed, and you say got Jackson Hayes or Christian Wood into that spot, they're going three and twelve. They're going three and twelve. And that's really all you need to know. Like so much of the duct tape that is holding the Lakers organization together is Anthony Davis.
Yeah, but if Lebron misses a Knight and Austin Reeves can be the shot creator with ad if you get a favorable interior matchup, they can win the game.
Yeah, and they did, and they did last year, and like and that that really is the crux of it, like they he And by the way, I don't know if you noticed, did you see that deal with Jared Allen just signed. He signed a three year like ninety something million, So Jared Allen's going to be over thirty million a year at the tail end of his current deal. Isaiah Hartenstein just signed a deal with the Thunder this
summer for twenty seven million a year. These are guys that, like, you know, Jared Allen's in that like like eighth or ninth best center in the league. Hartenstein's in that fourteenth, fifteenth.
Best complimentary guys.
Yeah, isn't it crazy that they're getting that much money though, And that to me is a really strong indicator of the league telling us that, like, oh shit, we need big dudes underneath the basket that can do the work.
Well, I think the game's getting longer and longer. Players are getting more skilled. And you know, I've said this had nauseum, but the whole small ball thing to me was such nonsense. It was like, no, the Warriors have the best shooting backcourt ever. You can try duplicating it, but like there's some things Patrick Mahomes does that your
quarterback can't. Said, let's just just do what you do and play to your you know, the Rockets tried so desperately to do small ball, and it's like sometimes you just you know, i mean, let's face it, the Splash Brothers next to West and Goodrich. There's never been a backcourt like that. Now I'm old enough to have seen both. But this is a big man's sport, you know, Like the NFL is a big dude sport. The NBA is
a length sport. It's always been that. I mean that I can remember standing at a Laker game once on the court next to Pauga Sol and I'm like, like, what planet created? I mean, his arms were so long and I'm just sitting there and I'm like with a buddy, and I'm like.
That's just an NBA player, Like what are you gonna do?
Like they're just not you know, just so much of it just you know, obviously skill matters, but this is a length league. I remember talking to Mark Warkin, team former executive in the NBA. I think Mark passed away years ago. He was a un l V Tarks number three guy, and he always said to me, he said Colin, he goes, people do not understand.
He said, Tart gets this.
Length. He goes, the Bulls were a great team, but they were the one of the longest teams ever.
He goes.
The only team in the Eastern Conference that had their length was the Cleveland teams with.
John Williams e Loo.
He said that was the only team in the league that could match up length wise. And he said, length gives you three possessions a game. Tip passes, He goes, Michael scored two baskets in those three possessions. He's like, if you have a great finisher and you're long, that's three possessions. And if you can get two baskets NBA game are you known? Now, this was in the pre three shot era, so maybe those three possessions don't equal
as many wins. But I think that the reality of it is is you know, that's why Wemby, it's it's the whole small ball thing outside of Isaiah Thomas in a different league, and staff guards don't lead you the titles. They lead you to wins that don't lead you to titles historically, So.
Yeah, really quick.
The my buddy Sam Vasini came on the show after the NBA Finals. He works at the Athletic does an amazing job, and we and we we tried to come up with the two biggest things that we learned from this playoff run, one for offense and one for defense. And what we settled on was on offense with spacing and that's it goes beyond shooting, but that it has to do with like how you actually set up the floor, the way you actually run your offense, and we won't
get into it. But on the defensive end, what we settled on was ground coverage and that does not just mean footspeed. Length is a direct like so for instance, like if you have a big on your back line who can help at the rim, but all also can test the shooter in the weak side corner. It's like
being in two places at once. And that's what Yannis did on the Bucks with with brook Lopez that made him so dominant as a devender, Like your ability to eat up chunks of the floor with an athlete that has a seven to two wingspan.
South Sudan Yeah, it's exactly.
And that's the thing, like everyone's like, oh, they're struggling with South Sudan and Susu Dan. By the way, as good as the USA team played today, they were within eleven in the in the.
Early part of the fourth quarter like that.
Just having a long, athletic team that plays hard, like automatically check so many basketball boxes.
Also much it's not it's not even blocks, it's shot alteration.
It's exactly.
It's literally it's penetrating and then circling out and saying I'm not gonna go there. Like you stop shots, you alter shots, you block shots. It's like certain things don't have to happen to have an effect. And length is one of those things where you know, you'll see sometimes a Chris Paul or a stuff going the lane and they see the redwoods and they're like, yeah, I'm gonna do a U turn and get out of here. There's there's no happy ending to this story.
Jason tim and.
Derek White and Drew Holiday by the way, the two guards for Boston. But they have the length of wings and so that could be a problem.
Yeah, boy, Derek White's good player. Darry Waite's such a good player.
Hoops tonight, Jason timp This was a fun forty minutes. Good good seeing you and we'll talk soon.
Good to see you, Colin.
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